


Together We Douse the Fires

by CadyWimzie



Category: Transformers: Rescue Bots
Genre: Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Just something sorta cute for my writing pleasure, Loosely based on the 'Together We Map the World' scene and score from HTTYD 2, Mild Peril, Play Fighting, Such mild angst it's practically non-existent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-26
Updated: 2018-08-26
Packaged: 2019-06-29 20:21:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15736683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CadyWimzie/pseuds/CadyWimzie
Summary: It was true they could barely stand each other, but being a GroundBridge away from home with no one familiar to talk to aside from one another helped out a lot with that.





	Together We Douse the Fires

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AcG_toqzR0) from HTTYD 2.  
> I feel like after the events of the final episode, Kade and Heatwave would be forced to deal with each other 24/7 with no breaks, being in the Training Center all the time. They'd learn even more than they already have about coexisting and not arguing _quite_ as much.  
>  But, y'know, they're still the same guys, so the latter would be inevitable at times.

Heatwave liked to think of himself as a bot who simplified things. Snuffed out trials before they became trials-- like punching a giant rock to crumbs before it landed on you, or outright destroying something dangerous instead of merely taking it somewhere safer. He acted in the moment.

This was the way he led, and the way he had as many successes under his belt as he did. _Yeah_ , his way wasn't always the right way, and _yes_ , there were times in the past where he made a bigger mess of things by not thinking in advance and doing things on impulse. Those were the reasons why he had more level-headed bots working with him... and answering _to_ him; he commanded respect at the end of the day, because you don't give someone the role of leader for no reason.

So, for obvious reasons, having a man(child) like Kade Burns behind your wheel conflicted with pretty much all of the above. Particularly the bit about being a leader, and being _able_ to simplify things when you were so convinced you had a human who didn't think at _all_ for a partner. Even the simplest of concepts were lost on him, it seemed. It had Heatwave stretching those simplification muscles often, though, so in time, he saw the circumstance as a sort of blessing.

Not so much, however, when Kade really had his mind set on something that was entirely improbable, unreasonable, irresponsible, or... you know, all of those words. The new recruits were elsewhere, so it wasn't like Kade needed to set an example for anyone. Not that it was _him_ the recruits looked up to, in Heatwave's unbiased observations.

"My ladder. will make things. go **_faster_** ," he gritted out, because the redhead just wasn't listening. And yeah, maybe he was getting a little free with the anger again, just because they were alone. Write him up.

The dog stranded on the splintered tree branch seemed to appreciate the effort, anyway. He was entirely unconcerned with his predicament and more focused on licking Kade's face whenever it came into range, like it was unbeknownst to him that he was practically hanging over a bed of sharp, stoney points on a treacherous cliff. The wood of the weak tree was wearing beneath the weight of both, Heatwave was fuming because Kade told him to stay back, and the dog's owners were a safe distance away, watching tearily; out of earshot, thankfully.

"Y'know, you worry too much," Kade had the nerve to say. He pulled the medium-sized canine halfway over his right shoulder, causing the branch to splinter farther and him to gasp, betraying his earlier confidence. Heatwave scoffed.

"This is the stupidest thing you've done yet." He ignored Kade's waving off this time and turned his back to extend his ladder. Before it could even touch the bark of the thin tree, he heard a loud _snap_ and a shrill yelp-- not just from the dog, but from Kade as well.

"Heat- GRAB! GRAB HIM!" the young man shouted. Heatwave sharply turned and shot out an arm, falling to his knees in the process, but, all the same, catching the dog out of the air in place of the missing branch and reeling him in fast. He set the shaky animal down on level ground beside him, and then immediately tore off after his partner, who was falling toward the upturned rocks set on impaling him.

He caught up quickly on legs alone, snatching Kade out of his free fall while simultaneously surveying the decline ahead of them. He pushed Kade into his driver's seat and transformed, flying for only a few seconds more before his tires hit a smoother reprieve in the spiky hill and he was rolling downward in vehicle mode, steering erratically to avoid crashing into the sharp formations. They looked so much smaller at a distance.

"Okay, I needed you for this!" Kade admitted, in a burst of panic. His hands gripped the steering wheel hard enough for Heatwave to wince, but they didn't hinder him. Just when he thought they were in the clear, the next formation came out of nowhere, and he had no other solution but to return to bot mode, jump over the spike at the last possible moment, and pull Kade out to hold him up at arm's length in preparation for the incurring collision with the ground.

He landed on his back and slid, creating a sizable trench in the dirt. He held onto Kade until he came to a full stop, and then a little longer after that, just coming to grips. Kade, mutually, wasn't all too eager to leave his grasp right away, so the arrangement worked. They heard the resounding _crack_ of the whole tree then hitting the first spike it came into contact with, supposedly uprooted by Heatwave's hasty dive to seize operations.

Feeling a sudden wriggling in his hands, the bot let go of Kade, who dropped to his feet right on top of his Cybertronian partner's supine chest to gawk up the hill at the chunks of tree that were raining down.

"That's just sloppy," he remarked. The surface area beneath him that was Heatwave shifted, and a menacing growl rose up around Kade as his exasperated partner moved to sit up.

"Get off me," the Fire Bot sneered, low and entirely unfriendly by this point. Kade quickly ambled to do just that, scrambling off his friend's scratched-up chassis, stepping off his forearm, and finally landing in the packed dirt beside him-- astride the big indentation from Heatwave's slide. Kade nearly twisted his ankle tripping over the edge of it.

"Okay, uh, not cool, you're right," he said, turning around with hands held out in front of him as a sort of calming, amending gesture.

Heatwave stood, thereby towering over him again; Kade had to take a few steps back in order to meet his gaze. The eye-optic contact was short lived, as the giant mech crossed his arms and looked away with a scowl contorting his features.

Sincere guilt stirred in Kade's gut-- although you wouldn't know it hearing him talk. "I'm sorry, okay? I don't know why I nitpicked; it's just what I do for some reason. I'm a jerk."

Even before he had finished speaking, the Rescue Bot covered his face with a palm and groaned into it, anger simmering.

"It's fine. I forgive you."

Somehow Kade didn't feel forgiven. His forehead met the palm of his own hand as he pushed his hair up, biting back a sigh. It only fell back into place. He noticed right at that second that his helmet was gone, too; probably flew off his head in the midst of the action.

"I... mean it," he said, edging back up to Heatwave and placing a hand on the bot's leg, frowning up at those averted, glowing orange optics. "I'm sorry. Thanks for saving me."

Heatwave let out a little _tch_ sound, having no doubt about Kade's honesty-- and, _honestly_ , not liking the sudden closeness very much at all. It was gross.

"Kade, it's okay," he said, hurriedly. His scowl faltered as he gently moved his leg away, arms dropping to his sides. After a moment of thought, he derisively added, "It's not _that_ I'm mad about."

Kade's attention was turned toward the hill. An innocent smile grew on his face when he saw the aforementioned missing helmet rolling down it  _slowly_ , taking its sweet time. Then Heatwave's last sentence occurred to him, and his head snapped around.

"Wait, what?"

"Ugh. Nothing." Heatwave was the one waving _him_ off this time. He only took about four or five steps forward after saying that, which equated to about fifteen steps for Kade-- all of which he used to follow the bot quite closely. The human crossed his arms and Heatwave rolled his optics at the display out of the corner of one of them. "You wouldn't talk about it if I hounded _you_. I'm fine."

"You're sulking," Kade pointed out. No matter how grave the issue, he felt a small twinge of humor, poorly hidden behind the faint simper on his lips. He was grateful Heatwave was refusing to look him in the eyes now. "What'd I do? I mean, besides the obvious."

"I'm _not_ sulking," was all Heatwave said.

Kade pinched his chin as he feigned thought. "Well, do you want me to say 'I'm sorry' again?"

" _No_ ," the mech pressed out, right before another irritated rumble of a groan overtook him when his leg was touched once more-- this time in a firm, mawkish hug. The loving squeeze, though faux, had him cringing through his bared teeth and stiff posture.

Why did humans do this?

"Because, you know, _I am_." Kade wrapped his arms around the massive leg to the best of his ability, just looking to annoy. "You feelin' the remorse, Heatwave?"

"Remorse?" Malevolence laced the testy bot's naturally deep voice. Kade was considering letting go, but before he could, he was picked up by the back of his coat and forcibly wrenched away. He started to worry the good-natured teasing didn't translate so well when Heatwave hoisted him high into the air-- a good twenty-something feet-- to glare at him up close, causing him to squirm nervously.

And any smart foe _or_ friend knew how intimidating an incensed Heatwave was.

"Aw, c'mon," Kade forced out for all he was worth, "you wouldn't deck a firefighter without a helmet."

"The helmet would do nothing to protect your face, Kade," Heatwave said, in the plainest voice imaginable.

"Yeah, I know," Kade replied, briskly shrugging as his unsupported body swung lazily to and fro. "I couldn't think of anything else on the spot."

"Didn't you tell me the _dads_ of your society tell the lamest jokes?"

"Nothing but back talk today! Put me down, Heatwave; I'm your handler."

The statement drew out a bout of unsettling laughter from the bot. Kade was struggling to cross his arms with the back of his coat being pinched, but he still felt smug. He didn't have much time to react and was warned only by a snide, "I'll put ya down," from his hotheaded mech of a partner before... up suddenly wasn't up anymore!

Kade darted his eyes around the patchy landscape as it tilted. He realized all too late that Heatwave was willingly  _falling backwards_ , reinforced in truth by the other hand tightening a grip around his midsection to protect him, as said giant hand always did.

As soon as Heatwave hit down, he flipped over with surprising speed, reversing their positions. Gravity took hold of him, and so Kade's frantic clinging to Heatwave's chest was as short lived as their snipey back-and-forth; the young man slipping off the smooth surface to the ground below and promptly getting pinned under his emergency vehicle's strong hand, laughing goofily all the while.

" _Argh_! Mankind's doomed!"

"What're you talking about?" asked Heatwave, as calm as ever. He entertained his partner's want for a game and thumped him on the shoulder and arm with his free fist, which dawdled idly above the human's flailing appendages when he got bored. The playful little jabs weren't even within the _realm_ of being hard enough to bruise, or cause discomfort to any capacity.

"We're enemies again!" Kade insisted, as he threw a hopeless swing at the Fire Bot's out-of-reach arm. "It's a brutal fight to the death between evil and evil!"

Heatwave's pinning hand was loosening its pressure as a slight grin showed up on his face. The human took advantage of the give and writhed out from underneath it, gloved fists flying into the metal of his partner's wrist and forearm-- although he had to reach far to give the latter a good punching. He was going light anyway; not to spare Heatwave any pain, but rather to do so for himself.

"Stop," Heatwave droned, for such _obvious_ effect, "that hurts."

"Wow, okay," Kade said, retracting his fist and unfurling it to massage his knuckles through the cloth, like he never heard the fire truck say anything in mock. "Why do you try to break my wrists, Heatwave? Why can't you be squishy or something?"

Heatwave cocked his head to the side. Leaving no pause for Kade to say anything else, the mech shifted all of his weight into his hip and flopped over, letting his previously elevated servo drop, dead weight, on top of the oldest Burns sibling. No need to say, ' _You'll_ be squishy by the time I'm through with you,' or anything to that effect; his actions spoke for themselves. The force of the impact alone made air hiss past the man's teeth, but he still had more to push out once the palm had him tacked down again, pressing him into the ground.

"My question still stands," Kade whispered. His hands were braced on Heatwave's much bigger one, but aside from that he struggled minimally.

Heatwave took a moment to evaluate his partner's face while his eyes were averted in a seemingly endless roll-back, searching the puffy clouds overhead. Analysis worn out, the bot allowed for a small smile to form in earnest. Secretly affectionate; he couldn't very well take time out to appreciate Kade if Kade was aware of it.

A better time than any to drench him, Heatwave decided.

Kade didn't see the turret of water exploding out of the bot's knuckles until it made torrential contact with the underside of his chin. He screamed in honest, startled fashion and threw his arms up to divert the stream elsewhere. It was practically needless, since Heatwave knew better than to aim at his nose or mouth. The high-pitched, offended-sounding, " _ACK_!" was too much for him, as it generally always was; he broke down in chuckles watching Kade shimmy out from between his index finger and thumb and finally push away, clothes and hair soaked.

The fireman stood apart from his bot, dripping wet. His half-lidded eyes widened as he smiled in mock, a short, ill-humored, "Ha," leaving his mouth as Heatwave's uninterrupted laughter continued. "You  _suck_ , ya old hunk of-"

He cut off his own speech to flick the water coating his sleeves and hands at Heatwave, smirking when it hit its mark. The Rescue Bot winced and looked down at his arm like something much more repulsive had just slapped into it; he proceeded to hose down the appendage in fierce spite of the irony, paying no mind to Kade's little _tch_ that definitely _did not_ sound at all like his own!

Needless to say, the dirt beneath their feet was no longer dirt, but dark, squelchy mud.

"Listen, you... big, metal jerk," the redhead started, watching his boots carefully as he stepped over to a dryer spot. "I've been tackling things without you, pretending to be deaf to cues... I admit it."

"I had no idea," said Heatwave, dryly.

"Yeah. As hard as it is to believe, it's the truth. It's just that I feel like I haven't been focusing much on my _own_ improvement lately; we're over here training  _bots_."

"The job trains you, Kade." The dryness and sarcasm was thrown away entirely from Heatwave's voice. The mech was up to a vertical base again in moments, giving all of his attention to his partner. "Besides, have you  _seen_ those recruits? If  _they_ need work, I  _know_  you don't. Where's the enthusiasm for completed training I should be seeing?"

"Uh, still here," Kade answered, weakly raising a still-dripping arm in the air. "But... people talk, y'know? Maybe it's just 'cause I don't have any little siblings to advise around the clock anymore... I dunno... but people seem to think robots can just be programmed to do one-hundred percent of the work and the human handler isn't necessary, and... it just...  _gets to me_."

"Who says that?" Heatwave immediately asked.

The need for cover aside, the idea was kind of preposterous all on its own. Bots couldn't rush into burning buildings and free people, period. That was all Kade's doing. Maybe a smaller, _actual_ man-made robot could, but then that wouldn't be a proper Rescue Bot. Not even close.

How Kade could even dignify the thought...

...but, maybe, between hearing these things and doing little outside of training the recruits in a private space...     

Kade crossed his arms, as if he heard every single musing from his friend spoken aloud. "Oh, just... people on the internet... Every customer in every donut shop on the Mainland probably..."

Heatwave had to sigh at that; the time he spent parked outside one of Kade's favorite places that very morning coming back to him in a rush. "Kade, unless _they've_ partnered up with a bot and know what it's like, they have no place talking about it."

"Gaaah, I _know_ ," grumbled Kade. His hands got lost in his wet hair as he looked back up the hill. On a reminded whim, he bent down and grabbed his helmet off the ground, placing it back on top of his head. "Maybe things're too uneventful. I hear the slightest bit of uninformed critique on my rescuing and suddenly I need to better myself."

"Bettering yourself  _doesn't_ come through not communicating with me during rescues." Heatwave's voice adopted a stern inflection, tossed only for what he said in followup: "But then... I think you already knew that deep down."

"Heh. Careful with that faith, Heatwave." He smiled tightly at the bot's long-awaited, " _Ugh_ ," and stood patiently by while his close friend phased down to four wheels in a buzz of whirring and loud _clinks!_ and _clanks!_  He walked alongside Heatwave while he transformed and immediately turned in once the red bot was in truck mode, hopping in under his roof and sitting down to buckle up. His foot accidentally kicked the donut box he left on the limited floor space, reminding him before the initial scent reached him that Heatwave's whole interior smelled a lot like fried dough and sugary glaze. Oops.

"Woo... Hate to do this to ya, but I'm sorry again-- 'bout telling you to stay back while I saved the dog. I almost jeopardized the rescue." 

Heatwave discreetly cleared his throat during the slamming of his own driver's seat door, effectively masking the sound. "Yeah, that... definitely wasn't what I  _wasn't_ sulking over."

"Some insight from the most big brotherliest bot in the whole Training Center set me straight." He reached out and coiled his fingers around the wheel-- not to try to steer, but just to emote outwardly a little.

Heatwave said nothing, which, in his case, meant much more good than bad. He started driving back up the hill while Kade leaned back, newly relaxed. The man squinted through the windshield at the shiny, colorful formations that were starting to form over the rocky precipice, glaring in the sunlight.

 _"Sir, we were informed of what happened!"_ The voice of one of the recruits jumped out at them, and the bot's worried face flashed on the com line screen as he talked. _"Are either of you hurt?"_   

"Negative." Heatwave cast a look upward at their loyal recruits waiting for them at the top. The strain he was putting on his engine indicated not only to him but to Kade as well that there was probably a better way up. "Clear the way, Rescue Bots; we'll be with you promptly."

A droplet of water rolled off the edge of one of Kade's eyelashes, blurring his vision halfway. He smirked and shook his head and propped his elbow up on the armrest beneath the rolled window, blinking it away.

He loved his job. He really did.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time writing anything Transformers related... and honestly the inspiration was _astounding_ to me once I actually started getting it down??? The first half was written all in one sitting!
> 
> I love these two characters and their relationship. I'm constantly on the fence about whether I like it better than the relationship Heatwave shares with Cody, since theirs is sweeter and less problematic. Makes it hard to call.  
> Ahh, I've got another fic idea for those two down the line, but it needs more thought.  
> But Heatwave and Kade-- they're both so playful and flippant, but only ever individually; hardly ever at the same time. This is essentially a fic about what a playful moment between the two of them might look like. If you've read this far, I hope you enjoyed!


End file.
